Susan Ettenheim

Teachers Teaching Teachers #167 - Lennie Levin on Crossing to College - 09.09.09

If you are already using Youth Voices — or planning to soon, we think you'll enjoy this Teachers Teaching Teachers podcast , recorded about a month ago. We talked the Youth Voices curriculum, guides, and more! Lennie Irvin, who is having his first-year college writing students contributing to the “Crossing to College” group.

If you are already using Youth Voices — or planning to soon, we think you'll enjoy this Teachers Teaching Teachers podcast , recorded about a month ago. We talked the Youth Voices curriculum, guides, and more! Lennie Irvin, who is having his first-year college writing students contributing to the “Crossing to College” group. Here’s more from Lennie on bridging from high school to college:

Crossing2College Home Page

College4U - home

http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/lirvin/0301site/EC5.html

What is College Readiness in Writing? and How Do We Get There?

Every year, we have far too many students like Ian. They aren’t the AP kids (though they might be), and they aren’t the students who fail our classes. They do OK, even sometimes receiving excellent grades in our high school classrooms. But when they get to college, they place into Developmental English classes, or worse (like Ian) they crash and burn and drop out of college. They fall off the bridge between high school and college. This site is devoted to local efforts to help more students graduating from high school place directly into college level writing classes, and importantly—do well in freshman composition. It is meant both as a resource and a professional community of practice dedicated to doing more to prepare our students for college and for helping these students do well once they are in college, for “college readiness” and “student success” in college are really two sides of the same coin.

The Three Frameworks of College Readiness
When we talk about “college readiness,” we can understand it within three frameworks. Each represents a significant part of what we mean by “readiness.”

Technical Readiness—Do students place into college level English classes? Refers to placement issues.

Writing Readiness—Are students’ writing skills and literacy practices able to handle college-level writing and reading assignments?

Student Readiness—Do students have the study skills, personal discipline and emotional readiness for pursing college-level work?

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #170 - Troy Hicks and The Digital Writing Workshop - Part 1 of 3 - Choice and Inquiry - 09.30.09

This is the first of a three-part series, guest-hosted by Troy Hick, author of the new Heinemann title, The Digital Writing Workshop, and Director of the Chippewa River Writing Project at Central Michigan University.  In this series, we will be exploring the principles and practices described in Troy's book. For this first episode, Troy welcomed three teachers (along with Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim) to the conversation, and they discuss how they foster student choice and inquiry in their writing classrooms:

Penny Kittle, Kennett High School in New Hampshire will offer perspectives on writing workshop principles and why we need to begin to focus on digital writing

Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, formerly of Negaunee High School in Michigan will discuss her use of wikis and Google Docs to spur student inquiry

Chris Sloan of Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City will share insights on how students can make choices with RSS readers and blogging

Next week, on October 7th, Troy and his guests will explore the idea of “author’s craft” as it relates to creating digital texts. On October 14th, Troy will lead a discussion on the process of conferring and response to student writers as they create digital texts

This is the first of a three-part series, guest-hosted by Troy Hick, author of the new Heinemann title, The Digital Writing Workshop, and Director of the Chippewa River Writing Project at Central Michigan University.  In this series, we will be exploring the principles and practices described in Troy's book. For this first episode, Troy welcomed three teachers (along with Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim) to the conversation, and they discuss how they foster student choice and inquiry in their writing classrooms:

Penny Kittle, Kennett High School in New Hampshire will offer perspectives on writing workshop principles and why we need to begin to focus on digital writing

Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, formerly of Negaunee High School in Michigan will discuss her use of wikis and Google Docs to spur student inquiry

Chris Sloan of Judge Memorial High School in Salt Lake City will share insights on how students can make choices with RSS readers and blogging

Next week, on October 7th, Troy and his guests will explore the idea of “author’s craft” as it relates to creating digital texts. On October 14th, Troy will lead a discussion on the process of conferring and response to student writers as they create digital texts. We would invite you to join us on Wednesday at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times.

Join The Digital Writing Workshop Ning.

 

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #166 - 09.02.09 - Minding the gap between library databases and social bookmarking - EBSCO and diigo

For this podcast, Susan Ettenheim invited Ron Burns, Director of Software Product Management at EBSCO to answer the question of whether or not bookmarking and databases go together. He begins his conversation by pointing out that Diigo is part of their "Bookmark" bar on the EBSCOhost interface, but many more issues arise as Susan is joined by five amazing teachers, tech integrators and media specialists/librarians: Alice Barr, Vicki Davis, Madeline Brownstone, Suzanne Hamilton and Carolyn Stanley

Susan Ettenheim begins this podcast by wondering if bookmarking and databases can go together. This question came from a recent webcast (TTT 165) when Joyce Valenza started an inquiry into a division she is beginning to see in her school. She has noticed that those students who have been introduced to social bookmarking in delicious and diigo are becoming less likely to use the library databases.

Like many of us, these students hesitate to use a source for their research that they are not able to comment on and get responses from members of their personal learning networks. Part of the value or a source comes from the on-line conversations that get attached to that source, and bookmarking sources found in a library or specialized database seems to be impossible. Links are not persistent and the resources remain behind a password. We agree with Joyce that we want students to be able to do both: use the rich material in library databases and learn how much knowledge comes from bookmarking in social networks.

(Joyce Valenza, by the way, will be on The Future of Education with Frandes Jacobson Harris and Howard Rheingold and hour before our show this Wednesday, September 30. Tune in to that show, then join us at EdTechTalk at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA / World Times. Our guests will be Troy Hicks, author of the new Heinemann title, The Digital Writing Workshop, and four teachers as they discuss how they foster student choice and inquiry in their writing classrooms.)

For this podcast, Susan Ettenheim invited Ron Burns, Director of Software Product Management at EBSCO to answer the question of whether or not bookmarking and databases go together. He begins his conversation by pointing out that Diigo is part of their "Bookmark" bar on the EBSCOhost interface, but many more issues arise as Susan is joined by five amazing teachers, tech integrators and media specialists/librarians: Alice Barr, Vicki Davis, Madeline Brownstone, Suzanne Hamilton and Carolyn Stanley

Here are few of the specialized/state databases that are discussed on this podcast:

Please stay tuned to Teachers Teaching Teachers. On TTT 169 (webcast on 09.23.09, and to be uploaded soon) Joyce Valenza and Chief Diigo Ambassador, Maggie Tsai joined us to further the dialogue. More to come!

Click Read more to see more notes from Ron Burns and a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #165 - 08.26.09 - Meet Lisa Dick and George Haines: Talking about research and diigo

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had a conversation about Diigo and annotations with Lisa Dick, Computer Education a teacher Northern Louisiana @tidertechie. I had put out a call for teachers who use Diigo with their students, and Lisa answered that call.

We also talked with George Haines @oline73. George teaches 7th Graders out on Long Island. One of his sites, by the way is a Google Site, so there’s more to talk about there, since I’ve been building a prototype of what I want students to do. Anyway… George and I connected on Twitter because I was wondering about how to keep my up-coming curriculum focused on self-initiated, self-interested, self-sustaining inquiries.

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we had a conversation about Diigo and annotations with Lisa Dick, Computer Education a teacher Northern Louisiana @tidertechie. I had put out a call for teachers who use Diigo with their students, and Lisa answered that call.

We also talked with George Haines @oline73. George teaches 7th Graders out on Long Island. One of his sites, by the way is a Google Site, so there’s more to talk about there, since I’ve been building a prototype of what I want students to do. Anyway… George and I connected on Twitter because I was wondering about how to keep my up-coming curriculum focused on self-initiated, self-interested, self-sustaining inquiries.

At Youth Voices, we do a lot of work around this question. We’ve borrowed James A. Beane’s beginning point in his Curriculum Integration work. It’s from Beane that we got the idea to have students write “10 self and 10 world questions“  There’s been a lot of — “Well, maybe we need to do this or that instead.” — And I’m open to some of this, but I still find this simple beginning place to be incredibly powerful.

Getting back to George Haines, he had some ideas that he said were too long to put into 140 characters, ideas about how to kick off self-directed projects. So we invited him onto TTT.

In short, we talked about research, annotating resources, sharing them in diigo, and we talked about why we do this self-motivated, “I-search” in the first place… and we’ll be meeting two new teachers. That’s the most wonderful part of this story. I had never met Lisa Dick or George Hines or the others that joined us on this webcast. We hope you enjoy meeting them too.

 

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

 

Teachers Teaching Teachers #164 - 08.19.09 - Connect, Comment and Create at Youth Voices - An Update on Our Drupal Site

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we talk about important changes (improvements, we hope) that we’ve been making to our Drupal site for students, Youth Voices.  We invited teachers who are using Youth Voices this year. Listen to find out what how they are planning to use this social networking site with their students this coming year.

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, we talk about important changes (improvements, we hope) that we’ve been making to our Drupal site for students, Youth Voices.  We invited teachers who are using Youth Voices this year. Listen to find out what how they are planning to use this social networking site with their students this coming year.

Youth Voices is much more than a web site. It is a community of teachers, working together to concoct a collaborative curriculum that supports our students in peer-to-peer online discussion. Chris Sloan, Paul Allison, and Susan Ettenheim started working together on this project in 2003. As we begin the 2009-2010 school year, we are excited to invite you and many more teachers into this work.

We are in the process of making several important changes to Youth Voices. Here are a couple:

  • Collaborative Curriculum: http://youthvoices.net/curriculum — We’re building it now. Join us!
  • The guides http://youthvoices.net/guides have been updated, organized… and there is more work needed here.
  • There are now three main ways for students to add Discussions to the site - See under Add a Discussion.

There is more! But that’s probably enough for now. Please enjoy this podcast. It's one of our "staff meeting" podcasts where we make public the planning that used to be done in private. If you are interested, we would love to work with you and your students this year. Just join the site, and let us know.

 

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.

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